An oak tree amidst the saguaros

I went to Tucson, planning to spend a week with my mom in the desert, counting, measuring and pondering the saguaros. I ended up spending a week with my mom in a hospital, thinking about an oak. And a grapefruit. The day after I arrived, her doctor had came into her room, sat down on a stool and started to explain why she hadn't been feeling quite right. At one point, he took a piece of paper full of her medical information, flipped it over and started drawing a picture. “Think of a big oak tree,” he said to my mom, several others in the room and, via cell phones held in front of the doctor,...

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